Hong Bao Media

In a business setting, accents can hinder your message being understood and lead to ambiguity and misinterpretation. So, why do people speak with accents, and what can they do to lose them? HBM's Mark Laudi discuss the secret of clear communication with Saveria.

Hong Bao Media and Shootsta are pleased to announce a strategic collaboration to equip corporate communications and marketing professionals with the tools and skills they need to produce video content in-house.

If there are two takeaways for disciples of communication from this year's ConnecTech in Singapore, they are (1) the rise of 5G, and (2) the proliferation of live streaming platforms - with huge implications for communications professionals and their senior leadership teams.

Without any further ado, can you please consign this eye-rolling cliché to history. It is now so common for on-stage presenters to wrap their opening or housekeeping remarks with this phrase that my eyes are rolling constantly.

In the whole Brexit chaos, the person who has impressed me the most is the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow. Communications Directors in Asia are unlikely to ever have to control a scrum of journalists like Bercow controls the House. But I have anyway distilled his edicts "from a sedentary position" into a set of learnings for business leaders and communications professionals.

​A surprising number of media training participants have asked me why they can't just speak their minds like Donald Trump. They admire his courage to say what he thinks. But while I have some sympathy with the motivation, it does not follow that you should follow Trump's example. Here are six reasons why.

The discussion about policing fake news misses one important point. Sure, people shouldn’t publish rubbish and pass it off as news. But news consumers must become better judges of whether stories are truthful.

People who are saying LinkedIn Live is late to the video live streaming party are missing the point. The network is designed for business people sharing meaningful, valuable content - and that will apply to live video, too. I cannot overstate the significance of this. Senior business leaders who want to make a success of LinkedIn Live will have to take an entirely different approach.

Recently, a group of your staff came to my TV studio for executive presence training and shared a surprising frustration: when they present to you and the senior leadership team, the hardest thing is to get your attention. The message you are sending your staff when you and the SLT don't pay attention is you don't care – and neither should they. Is that the culture you want in your organisation?